How We Operate
by oohlalala
Summary: In a single moment, your life can change forever. What happens when she realizes that not only does she have to work with him, but she has to answer to him as well? AU, no DH spoilers.
1. How We Operate

_Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. Well...not even the plot, really. But whatever._

_Recommended Soundtrack: You Know I'm No Good by Amy Winehouse_

_A/N: Sooo, being attached to both fandoms of Grey's Anatomy and Harry Potter (lately, more so the latter), I thought it would be fun to kind of...combine the two. So, this is **NOT A CROSSOVER!** I repeat, NO CROSSOVERS IN SIGHT! This is just my HP version of Grey's Anatomy, in a way...if you've seen Grey's, then I'll have you know, this will not be me just writing down transcripts and changing the names. Yes, at first, the plot will be very similar, if not identical, but that's just to get started up. It will take on its own identity soon enough, and I ask you to try not and spoil anything for the first few bits. __ If you have **not** seen Grey's...well, then, enjoy! _

_And after that ridiculously long author's note, without further adieu, I present you..._

Prologue

How We Operate

She sighed heavily, letting her body rest against the worn leather seat that had surely held so many filthy bodies before her.

Although the day had been just as any other, she was exhausted from trying to keep up appearances and the constant flow of fake smiles and insincere greetings, and she rather fancied a few shots of straight-up Gremlin's Scotch, which was in actuality just an intensified version of Muggle's tequila.

She sighed again, fiddling with the straps of her navy blue dress, which she'd expertly picked out to set off the shade of her fiery red hair. She wasn't one to dress up every day, or even often, but she did pull it out when she needed to, and she'd chosen this number exactly for that reason.

If given the choice, she'd be in jeans and a jumper. However, the dress code at the mixer she'd just attended was black tie. Why St. Mungo's thought it pertinent to have an alcoholic party so that the new Junior Healers - who would, not so coincidentally be starting the next day - could get to know each other, she had no idea. She was sure that a load of hungover Healers did not a functioning hospital make.

The low, deep base notes of the music thumped through the bar, reverberating throughout her chest and giving her a swimming, floaty feeling that was not at all aided by the four shots she'd just downed in as many minutes, stopping only to wait for the bartender to make his way down the long counter to fill her nearly minuscule glass to the brim.

She tapped her feet to the beat of the music, and chanced a glance around the crowded establishment to make sure that no one who might approach her was nearby - she'd chosen this place for the exact reason that she was almost positive nobody would recognize her here...she _was_ new in town, but you never know who you're going to run into in the wizarding world, especially in London. However, her quick scouring of the thumping bar gave her a momentary view of a gorgeous, dark haired man with flashing green eyes sitting at her 4 o'clock, blatantly staring at her through a set of dorky [and yet incredibly sexy glasses, with a tiny smirk on his face. Her eyes glazed over him instantaneously, trying her hardest not to give him any hints or lead him on in any sort of way that gave him the go-ahead to approach her.

However, despite all outward oozings of disdain and anti-social attitude, the adonis sitting at the dark table in the corner got up and crossed the crowded room to stand next to her, his hand resting firmly yet softly on the back of her chair, careful not to touch her and be too forward.

"Excuse me," he said politely, "Do you have the time?" She noticed that his voice was rough and deep, but not gravelly and grating like many of the wizards that had hit on her in previous times, and this immediately attracted her to him, despite her strongest intentions to spend an evening drinking, _alone_.

"Uhhh," she said, filling the space it took to check her beautiful, Muggle-made watch that had been a birthday present from her father, a long, long time ago, "About 11:30," she finished with a polite smile that clearly said, _'Back up before I castrate you with a Slicing Charm.'_

"So it's July 31st, 2007, 11:30 PM," he said, and she gave him an odd look, "Thanks. I just wanted to remember the exact moment I met you."

Despite herself, she felt herself biting her lip in an attempt to stop the corners of her lips from coming up in a smile.

--

_PS - This fic is named for the song, 'How We Operate' by Gomez. _

_What did you think for the prologue? Please review!_


	2. Swell

_A/N: Chapter named for the song 'Swell' by Thomas Cunningham. Please R&R! __And I also want to point out that you still don't know who the characters are in this, so don't make any assumptions. _;

_Recommended Soundtrack: If Looks Could Kill by Camera Obscura_

--

Swell

She woke up, her head pounding furiously against the beam of sunlight trickling in through the slats between the shades. She refused to move, knowing that as soon as she did, a familiar feeling of nausea would erupt in her belly, and when she realized that she was on the couch, she knew she was too far away from her little closet of potions to get there before the churning in her stomach overtook her.

However, along with the realization that she was sleeping on her couch instead of her warm, cozy bed one flight up, she was also naked. And there was a naked man face down, snoring on her floor.

"Oh god," she moaned. "What have I done?" She ripped away the cerulean blanket that was covering his rear, and wrapped it around herself, although she got a feeling from their current state of dress, or lack thereof, she'd lost all shyness and morals the previous night, and it was unlikely she now had anything to hide from him.

She plopped a pillow on him to give him some sort of dignity, however, this awakened him with a loud grunt and moan, both of which were very, very familiar to her. She attempted to make a right break upstairs without talking to him, hoping he'd get the message and leave before she got out of the loo, but she nearly tripped over a high stack of medical journals discarded at the end of the couch and missed her window of opportunity as he rolled over and gave her a bleary-eyed, yet charming smile.

In her mind, she was grasping at straws for excuses to get him out of her house with the least amount of communication possible, but she was quickly coming up empty-handed.

"Ahh..." she said, "I'm late. Very, very late." Which, by the glance she'd just taken at the large, ornate clock hanging on the wall, was not a complete lie, "So you have to go."

"Or," he drawled still on the floor, and she realized that she needed to immediately extinguish the butterflies that had erupted in the pit of her stomach at the sound of his low, sexy morning-after voice, "You can come down here and we can pick up where we left off."

"No!" she said, almost immediately, and stung, with a small shrug, he began to pull on his boxers and dark blue jeans. She sighed, not meaning to have sounded so rude. _'Oh well. It's not like I'm ever going to see him again anyways.'_ She tried to search her mind for polite goodbyes, but seeing as she had never put herself in this situation before, she was at a total loss for words.

"I think this is yours," he said with a cocky smirk, emerging from underneath the couch with not only his black button-down that had been discarded, but also her bright purple bra that had been thrown aside with it.

Blushing furiously, she snatched it from his outstretched hand and tucked it underneath the blanket that was giving her her only source of coverage, "Well, I'm going upstairs to get ready, and when I get back, you won't be here. So it was nice to meet you..." she paused, realizing that she couldn't remember his name.

"Harry," he said, as he jumped over the back of the couch to shake her trembling hand, a far cry from what had happened the night before.

"Ginevra," she said with a tiny, nervous giggle. With a final wave, she departed up the stairs.

--

_Okay, so now we know for sure it's Harry and Ginny. And if you were astute, you would've noticed that Harry was alone in a bar on his birthday. This will be explained later... _


	3. Monster Hospital

**A/N: Not the best chapter ever, and quite short actually, but quite necessary as well. :) This chapter is dedicated to Steph and unfortunatestar who left me excellent reviews.** **If you haven't reviewed - please do so! I really won't continue if there's all of two people reading. I don't want to sound like an ungrateful bitch, but it is quite disheartening. :(**

_Recommended Soundtrack: Monster Hospital by Metric_

Monster Hospital

After Ginny darted upstairs to hurriedly get ready, she was more than pleased to see that "Harry" (if that even was his real name), had taken her advice and vacated the premises as soon as possible.

However, her semi-good morning lasted all of 5 minutes when her kettle started exploding with grayish goop and emitting long, high-pitched howls. No matter how many times she tried to repair it and clean it up, it would just start oozing and exploding and howling all over again, so she eventually just gave up and resigned herself to the fact that she would not be getting coffee that morning.

Irritable, she Apparated to the broken down department store, which, once a wizard stepped through the broken window, was actually the front door of a glowing white stone building, home to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. With her shoulders set, she made her way into the gilded revolving doors to begin her first day of her dream career - being a Healer. She entered the building and easily found her way to the locker room where she picked up her uniform and ID.

"Bloody fucking brilliant," she mumbled to herself for the umpteenth time that day, as she realized that attempting to get the kelly green strap of her massive navy blue houndstooth tote bag out of the jam in the door of her locker was absolutely futile, "Great way to start the day."

She shoved her head through the top of the stark white uniform and quickly put her arms through the sleeves of her plain, lime green Healer's robe. Suddenly, a somewhat handsome man with blue eyes and short, mouse brown hair appeared next to her, holding his hand out for a shake.

"Seamus Finnigan, pleased to make your acquaintance," he said cheerily, his voice carrying a heavy Scottish accent. Ginny shook his hand, immediately warming up to his nice, somewhat goofy attitude.

"Ginevra Weasley, but everyone calls me Ginny," she said with a smile, "Are you one of the new Junior Healers, too?"

"Unfortunately," he said, taking a large bite of the crisp, red apple he'd Summoned from his locker, which was right across the aisle from her own, "Over there's Dean Thomas and Esmeralda Green, they're in our group as well," he said, pointing to a dark-skinned boy and a tall blonde woman. Ginny gave them a small wave and continued trying to open her locker back up, but it absolutely wouldn't budge, and Seamus gave a little flick of his wand and the door burst open. Blushing, she gave a small smile of thanks and dug into her bag, looking for all of the things she'd need for the day.

"You look kind of familiar," he said after a moment of studying her profile, "You go to Hogwarts?"

"Uhm, no," she said, purposefully not elaborating.

Seamus seemed to get the hint, and straightening up said, "Right. Well, good luck today," and went back to his own locker.

Double checking to make sure she had her wand, ID, and quill and notebook in her pockets, she darted to the bulletin board hanging up in the hallway to find her assignment. As a Junior Healer, even though Ginny was full aware of what kind of magical medicine she wanted to practice, she still had to work in every department, at the mercy of whoever needed an extra pair of hands at any given moment.

Scanning down the list, she found her name, _'Ginevra Weasley - Level Three: Burns and Boils Unit.'_

"Bloody hell," she moaned, "Could this get any worse?"

It, in fact, did get much worse for her that morning. Her first patient was an old, hairy man named Ralphie, who was covered from head to toe in nasty purple furuncles that burst every hour, on the hour, and had to be covered in Zap-A-Boil cream and re-bandaged so that when the next set of painful boils grew back and blew up, whatever was afflicting the man wouldn't contaminate any of the other patients with flying pus.

After spending all morning and most of the afternoon bandaging him, she finally figured out that he'd accidentally eaten wankerweed, which was actually a type of rare, poisonous mushroom that disguised itself as lettuce. Tired and grossed out, she gave him a potion that would cure him until the poison filtered out of his system.

Sighing, she made her way back to the bulletin board, hoping beyond hope that someone had requested her or needed her in another wing of the hospital. Alas, what now felt like her death sentence was still posted up to what she wished was no longer her name.

She heaved another sigh and turned to the Healer's Aid, the wizard version of a nurse, sitting behind the desk to her left.

Glancing at her name tag, Ginny turned on her sweetest, most candy-filled voice, and begged, "Dorea, do you think there is any way I could possibly, maybe, _hopefully_ get delegated to another service?" she questioned, and even batted her eyelashes and pouted.

Dorea, an old, slightly haggard woman, was clearly unamused and immune to Ginny's innocent-little-girl act, deadpanned, "You'll have to ask the Head Healer."

Nodding, Ginny replied, "And who would that be?"

Dorea, who had turned back to her paperwork, which, in her opinion, she had been so rudely interrupted from, pointed straight down the hallway to a group of Senior Healers bent over a piece of parchment and discussing a patient in hushed voices. "Healer Potter!"

Glancing up to see who had called his name, Harry saw no one at first, but did a double take and realized that the red head he had woken up to this morning was standing in the same direction the voice had come from, eyes wide as a house-elf's, staring right at him.

"Bugger," she murmured, before turning and darting the other way.

--

_Yay or nay? Please R&R. Criticism is welcome. _:)


	4. AUTHORS NOTE

Hello, hello, hello!

So...I have to be honest...this isn't the name under which I generally post fanfiction. This is an alias for me, of sorts, for posting HP fanfiction.

So, when I decided to revise and re-post this (I'm unhappy with it _already_), I figured it would just be easier to do it under my regular user name - lalalovely47. I'll PM all of you who have reviewed and have alerts on my story as soon as I repost it - thank you very much!

-Rachel


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